County: Dublin Site name: Zoo Road, Phoenix Park, Dublin
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DU018–007 Licence number: 08E0739
Author: Melanie McQuade, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd, 27 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Site type: Post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 712883m, N 734987m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.353037, -6.304378
Monitoring was undertaken on road realignment works on a stretch of Zoo Road and along an unnamed road connecting Fountain Road with the North Road, between Chesterfield Avenue and the North Road.
A mid-20th-century concrete bunker, a post-medieval culvert and a number of small brick-built culverts and drainage pipes, both ceramic and metal, were uncovered during the monitoring works.
The concrete bunker was located at the edge of the path fronting onto the western side of the North Road. It had probably acted as a military outpost guarding the park entrance at the North Circular Road. A mitigation strategy was put in place with the full cooperation of the contractor whereby the concrete bunker, still in remarkably good condition, was preserved in situ within the new traffic island leading on to the North Road. The structure was almost wholly intact, except for the walls in the entrance corridor leading into the main basement area. Angled sockets in the corners of the structure had probably housed two parallel A-frames to support a wooden roof. The structure was of shuttered concrete and was built below ground level. It was 5.1m long and 2.4m wide internally and the floor was 1m below existing ground level. The walls of the main structure were c. 0.4m wide and those of the entrance corridor were 0.2m wide.
The culvert was located under the road immediately east of the south-east corner of the entrance building to the zoo. It ran east–west for 4.5m then made a right angle turn in a southerly direction but its full extent was not exposed. The internal passage was 2m wide and 2.1m high for much of its length but narrowed to 1m and reduced to 0.9m high c. 5m from the corner. The floor was made from cobble and flagstones and the walls were constructed of limestone blocks, with occasional brick fillers. The culvert was probably part of the overflow system for the large man-made ponds that were built inside the zoological gardens in the 1830s. In this respect, its southern orientation would take the surplus water down towards the Liffey. The western end of the culvert was blocked and it had ceased to function, at least since the new entrance building to the zoo was constructed.
The only finds uncovered during monitoring were modern ceramic pieces, the earliest being a sherd of brownware, and fragments of corroded iron.
